The employment numbers are out today. The headline numbers are not good news for housing: U3 unemployment ROSE to 7.9% and U6 unemployment and partial employment remained the same at 14.4%. The good news? Labor force participation didn’t get any worse! It remained the same at 63.6%. The bad news? We are now like Japan in terms of labor force participation after we leveled off under President Clinton and began declining. The civilian employment to population ratio also remained the same as a measly 58.6%. But also like Japan, our employment to population ratio is generally declining. Like the movie...

In the latest attack on the American people, a decorated War Hero has been arrested and charged with five counts of third degree criminal possession of a weapon, for having empty 30 round AR-15 Magazines in his vehicle. On Sunday January 6th Staff Sgt. Nathan Haddad, a decorated combat veteran, was driving through Jefferson County New York when he was randomly pulled over for a vehicle check. Haddad, who had five 30 round empty magazines in his possession, was arrested by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and charged with five felony counts. According to Haddad’s brother, Michael Haddad, Nathan thought...

As the Pentagon pours attention and resources into the conflict-ridden Asian-Pacific theater, it's made an unheard of command choice. The AP reports Australian Maj. General Richard Burr is now Deputy Commanding General for Operations at U.S. Pacific Command (USARPAC) out of Hawaii. It's the first time a non-American has served in such a high-ranking position at this type of command. This isn't some out-of-the way little military base — this is the command led by Major General George Moore in the days after World War II. Moore fought at Battan along with enough other dark Pacific campaigns to fill a...

Our weak economy is stumbling yet again. America’s GDP actually shrank during the last three months of 2012, after three years of Obama’s “recovery.” Jobless claims jumped last week “unexpectedly.” And a new report says our national debt will soon be 200 percent of our entire national output — or twice as high as that of Greece. Since the inauguration, what have President Obama and the White House been talking about? Jobs, the economy and debt? Nope. It’s been gun control, same-sex marriage, women in combat and illegal immigration. I’m so old I remember when campaigning on divisive wedge issues...

A global medical technology company has laid off nearly 100 employees at its offices in Tennessee and Massachusetts and is blaming the layoffs on the medical device tax tied to ObamaCare. London-based Smith & Nephew said Thursday it laid off fewer than 100 employees between the two offices, which operate as the company's advanced surgical devices unit, according to The Commercial Appeal. The company specializes in developing orthopedic reconstruction products, has nearly 11,000 employees and operates in over 90 countries, according to its website. The Affordable Care Act includes a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices, which is expected to...

An Idaho Republican made waves on Twitter this week, tweeting that forcing insurance companies to participate in healthcare exchanges is like marching Jews off to death camps during the Holocaust. In a series of messages that began Jan. 22 and continued until Wednesday, state Sen. Sheryl Nuxol said that the Affordable Care Act amounts to "tombs" for insurance companies. "Much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps, private insurers are used by the feds to put the system in place because the federal government has no way to set up the exchange. Several years from now, the federal...

Washington tends to have a narrow view of what counts as “economic policy.” Anything we do to the tax code is in. So is any stimulus we pass, or any deficit reduction we try. But most of this mistakes the federal budget for the economy. The truth is, the most important piece of economic policy we pass — or don’t pass — in 2013 may be something we don’t think of as economic policy at all: immigration reform. Congress certainly doesn’t consider it economic policy, at least not officially. Immigration laws go through the House and Senate judiciary committees. But...

Today must be International Backpedaling Day. Obama says: “Never mind a million EVs by 2015.” Under a new strategy announced today, the Department of Energy promised to support research into new battery technologies and manufacturing methods that would lower the cost of lightweight materials and improve vehicles’ fuel-efficiency, Reuters reports. But the DOE backpedals furiously from a goal set out in a 2011 State of the Union speech, where President Barack Obama announced what he called “Apollo projects of our times.” One of them was the goal for the United States to be “the first country to have a million...

Several West Virginia county sheriffs said they would defy any federal assault weapons ban proposed by President Obama. Earlier this month, Obama unveiled 23 separate executive actions to curb what he called "the epidemic of gun violence in this country." Additionally, he urged Congrees to pass a new ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and asked for a universal background check requirement for all new gun purchases. If that ban were to become federal law, at least five West Virginia sheriffs said they wouldn't enforce it and vowed to protect people's right to bear arms under their interpretation of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in President Barack Obama's overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan had hoped. As a result, some families that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear. The Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress...

Migrants working in the United States sent a staggering $120 billion back to their families last year, it was revealed today. The amount of money being sent by migrants across the entire world reached $530 billion last year, making it a larger economy than Iran or Argentina, the data from the World Bank showed.

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year. Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for family of five will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan. “The annual national...

President Obama, rightfully jealous of the immense popularity of his rival, North Korea's Kim Chi-un, has managed to surpass him. North Korean women joyfully considering the bright futures of their children under Kim Chi-un After long running neck with North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Chi-un as the most popular head of state ever, President Obama had seemed likely to suffer a major setback when Kim delighted his people even more than before by becoming the first head of state go to the moon. Not content with trying to diminish Kim's popularity in North Korea by spreading rumors that he might...

Considered a cancer-surviving “badass on a bike,” it turns out Lance Armstrong is just a badass — and a fraud. Armstrong's admission that he doped his way to seven Tour de France titles even prompted CBS News CEO Jeffrey Fager to Think Again about his network's role in the “Miracle Man's” narrative. “We helped create the myth,” he acknowledged, because “we wanted to believe this absolutely inspirational story. But we were duped.” Unearned moral superiority and blazing self-righteousness hastened Armstrong's rise as he slandered and sued whistle-blowers into submission. “I was a bully in the sense that I tried to...

The was a large print of economic news this morning. The most important prints for the housing and commercial real estate markets are personal income (which rose) and Consumer Comfort (which fell again). Personal surged in December by 2.6% versus the expectation of 0.8% by economists. quarter of 2008, a report showed yesterday. Some companies paid dividends and employee bonuses earlier than usual before tax rates went up this year. The Commerce Department estimated about $26.4 billion of the increase in incomes last quarter was attributable to early dividend payments and another $15 billion reflected bonuses and other types of...

Political commentary at its most irreverent! Tiz fearlessly floods the online airwaves telling it like it is – unafraid to speak her mind… daring to unearth truths and voice that which is foremost on the minds of … Americans today. Popular guest of hot talk radio and quoted by Coulter, Dobbs and the like… when you want relief from the lame stream media, tune in to the Tizzinator for shocking and revealing political analysis at its best! Libs love to hate her, conservatives rely on her honest appraisal of the political landscape… tune in for a wild ride with the...

The federal government helped bring the economic recovery to a virtual halt late last year -snip- Disappointing data released Wednesday underscore how tighter fiscal policy may continue to weigh on growth in the future as government spending, which increased steadily in recent decades and expanded hugely during the recession, plays a diminished role in the United States economy. -snip- The economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the last three months of 2012, the worst quarter since the economy crawled out of the last recession, Still, economists said the seemingly bleak gross domestic product report was not...

I guess you can call this progress: we’re not blaming Bush for the economic non-miracle on Main Street anymore. From now on, we’ll be blaming tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters: As well as “strong headwinds.” Specifically strong headwinds kicked up by all those wily weepubwicans in the House who are hampering our economic recovery. I’m still stunned. How could the GDP have dropped so precipitously in just one quarter when our jobs! jobs!jobs! numbers have been so strong? Either the Republicans’ politics of destruction are worse than we thought, or the GDP is a less perfect measure...

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous is known for making headlines, and he’s at it again. In an interview with David Gregory on Meet The Press, Jealous said that African Americans are doing worse under President Obama than under President Bush. “When you look at joblessness in this country, the country’s back to pretty much where it was when this president started,” he said. “White people in this country are doing a bit better. Black people are doing far worse.” Now that election season is over, it’s clear that the honeymoon between the Obama administration and the NAACP is over....

Another 'who woulda thunk it' moment: The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus. The economy shrank from October through December for the first time since the recession ended, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles. Get outta here! You mean with businesses fretting over the unknown cost of ObamaCare, with taxes being raised for almost every American, and government spending continuing to spiral out of control that...